Backyard
Nature's Direct Feed from |
Last updated on May 20th, 2013
| Cambodias great land grab: Click here |
| Bangkok Post: Ask Sreap Samoen where are the communal grazing lands? Where can local villagers fish and grow crops? The 50-year-old woman with a weather-beaten face points into the distance and says: "It's all gone. The company has it now." She's standing near a cluster of tiny shacks in Cambodia's remote north, hidden in the Dong Nai rubber plantation owned by the Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG). "Many people have lost their land," she says before wandering off. For more than a decade villagers have pestered and... |
| UK clean tech missions lined up for Colorado and Brazil: Click here |
| BusinessGreen: Clean tech start-ups from across the UK are from today being invited to apply to take part in two major new trade missions designed to help drive investment and orders for innovative green businesses. The Clean and Cool Missions initiative, which has previously undertaken successful trips to San Francisco and India backed by UK Trade and Investment and the Technology Strategy Board, is to host a week-long trip to Brazil in early November, followed by a separate trip to Colorado in early December.... |
| Climate risk: UN says business response needs more urgency: Click here |
| BusinessGreen: Businesses are failing to protect their overseas supply chains despite being increasingly exposed to the risk of natural disasters, the UN will warn today. A new report by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) and consultancy giant PwC says that while there is a growing awareness of the threat floods, drought and storms can pose to business operations, companies rarely share expertise on how to cope with extreme weather threats with each other or the public sector. Economic... |
| Extreme global warming seen further away than previously thought: Click here |
| Reuters: Extreme global warming is less likely in coming decades after a slowdown in the pace of temperature rises so far this century, an international team of scientists said on Sunday. Warming is still on track, however, to breach a goal set by governments around the world of limiting the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, unless tough action is taken to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions. "The most extreme rates of warming simulated by... |
| Study Projects Steep Increase in NYC Heat-Related Deaths: Click here |
| Climate Central: An increasing number of New Yorkers are likely to die from heat-related causes as global warming causes more extreme heat events, according to a new study released Sunday. The study found that heat-related mortality may rise 20 percent by the 2020s, and in some worst-case scenarios, it could increase by 90 percent or more by the 2080s, and the net temperature-related mortality, which includes the drop in deaths related to cold weather, could jump by a third compared to current levels. The study,... |
| Rising Temperatures in Europe Leave Ducks Grounded: Click here |
| Climate News Network: Most birds are acutely sensitive to changes in temperature. Scientists now say that changes in climate and warmer temperatures in parts of Europe have resulted in the migration patterns of certain birds being radically altered. A study looking at the migration patterns of three species of duck -- the goldeneye, goosander and tufted duck -- has found there has been a sharp decrease in the number of birds migrating south. Birds like this female goosander are migrating much less than before due... |
| Will Angelina Jolie Help End Climate-Change Denial, And Help The Republican Party?: Click here |
| Fobes: File this one under unintended consequences. Angelina Jolie, by announcing her preventative double masectomy, will likely have significant influence well beyond women’s health. By modeling how to think with data when data do not tell us what we would otherwise want them to say, she displayed a level of decision-making courage that business and political leaders should strive to emulate. For example, her leadership just may end up helping those fighting in the Republican Party to end ongoing anti-science... |
| Caribbean Scientist Warns of Climate Change Disaster: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: The Caribbean does not have the luxury of time for decisive action on climate change and global warming. In fact, it is on the brink of calamity, according to a prominent scientist. Conrad Douglas, a Jamaican scientist who has published over 350 reports on environmental management and related matters, has warned that "urgent action at all levels [is] required now", cautioning the region against complacency in dealing with climate change. Noting that earlier models forecast that an atmosphere... |
| Climate change meltdown unlikely but human disaster looms, claims new research: Click here |
| Guardian: Some of the most extreme predictions of global warming are unlikely to materialise, new scientific research has suggested, but the world is still likely to be in for a temperature rise of double that regarded as safe. The researchers said that warming was most likely to reach about 4C above pre-industrial levels if the past decade's readings were taken into account. That would still lead to catastrophe across large swaths of the Earth, causing droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves and with... |
| A second chance to save the climate: Click here |
| New Scientist: Humanity has a second chance to stop dangerous climate change. Temperature data from the last decade offers an unexpected opportunity to stay below the agreed international target of 2 °C of global warming. A new analysis took temperature rise in the most recent decades, and worked out what this means for the coming ones. It suggests that Earth will warm more slowly over this century than we thought it would, buying us a little more time to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous... |
| Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming 'not as likely': Click here |
| BBC: Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term. Since 1998, there has been an unexplained "standstill" in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere. Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly. The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years... |
| Climate Change vs Terrorism and the Costs of Inaction: Click here |
| Energy Collective: At the turn of this century drought set in in the American Southwest, which persists to this day. Without water, all living things cease to exist. Even as the Southwest and other parts of the planet are parched by a warming planet, other parts are saturated by moisture that originally was evaporated from overheating dry latitudes and the oceans. The resultant storms and flooding also extinguishes lives. September 11, 2001, four passenger airliners carrying 227 passengers and crew were... |
| Heatwave deaths in New York city could rise by up to 22%, study shows: Click here |
| Guardian: New York city could experience up to 22% more deaths from extreme summertime heat in the coming decade under global warming, according to a study of the impact of climate trends. The higher deaths will be partially offset by a reduction in deaths due to the milder winters predicted in Manhattan. Overall, however, the net effect of the new temperature norms under climate change would be to increase weather-related deaths in New York city by up to 6.2% a year by the 2020s, according to the scientists.... |
| How Green is my levy: Click here |
| Business Line: To ensure sustainable growth, green tax in India is a mixture of incentives and, of late, a rise in penalties. The economist Kenneth Boulding once warned that anyone who believes exponential growth can continue forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. Maintaining respectable economic growth rates is imperative for all countries, and a high level of consumption is now a way of life. Collectively, this has put food, water and energy supplies under increasing pressure. The... |
| Who's Paying the Price for Global Warming?: Click here |
| Scientific American: Climate change is already melting the Arctic, queering weather and threatening food supplies. So who's paying the price for all these global warming impacts? It might seem like insurers are most at risk. Indeed, insurers did pay out some $33 billion in climate-related damages last year in the U.S. alone. But it turns out that bearing the brunt of climate change costs is you, the taxpayer. A new analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC, finds that the federal government spent... |
| Tar sands exploitation would be game over climate, warns leading scientist: Click here |
| Guardian: Major international oil companies are buying off governments, according to the world's most prominent climate scientist, Prof James Hansen. During a visit to London, he accused the Canadian government of acting as the industry's tar sands salesman and "holding a club" over the UK and European nations to accept its "dirty" oil. "Oil from tar sands makes sense only for a small number of people who are making a lot of money from that product," he said in an interview with the Guardian. "It doesn't... |
| MN State Rep Calls Climate Change 'Complete United Nations Fraud And Lie': Click here |
| ThinkProgress: On Wednesday night, Minnesota State Representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) took to the House floor to talk about climate change and renewable energy. Using sources such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Gruenhagen told his colleagues that climate change is a “complete United Nations fraud and lie…. The latest facts from CPAC show that in the last sixteen years there’s been no global warming.” While it is common practice among climate skeptics to claim that the Earth... |
| Airline emissions deal may not come before EU deadline: Click here |
| Reuters: Hope is fading for a global deal to regulate the airline industry's greenhouse gas emissions ahead of a fall deadline, even though failure could push the industry back to the brink of a trade war over the European Union's emissions trading system. Last November the EU suspended its controversial scheme to force all airlines to buy carbon credits for any flight arriving in or departing from European airspace. The scheme had pitted European states against China, the United States, India and others,... |
| Methane Across the Country: Click here |
| Environmental News Network: Methane is created naturally near the Earth's surface, primarily by microorganisms by the process of methanogenesis. It is carried into the stratosphere by rising air in the tropics. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, stronger than carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though on a century timescale, carbon dioxide is far stronger. "This research suggests significant benefits to slowing climate change could result from reducing industrial... |
| Forget pipelines - Canada must prepare for a post-carbon world: Click here |
| Globe and Mail: The expansion of oil-sands operations and various pipeline proposals to get bitumen to market have incraseingly been topics of conversation in Canada, from debates in the House of Commons to discussions around the dinner table. Much of the discussion has focused around tangible things that we can see – devastation of the Alberta landscape from surface mining operations, pollution of downstream rivers, the threat of pipeline spills, and the danger of accidents involving supertankers along the British... |
| California's cap and trade should not use forestry offsets: Click here |
| Sacramento Bee: When Californians passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, we committed to one of the most forward-thinking pieces of climate legislation in the country, with comprehensive strategies to reduce carbon emissions from nearly all sectors of the economy. Unfortunately, the California Air Resources Board is considering a move that will undermine the best intent of this law by linking it to a benign-sounding yet dubious and untried scheme to protect rain forests in Mexico and Brazil. Many peasant... |
| Should California's cap and trade use forestry offsets? Yes: Click here |
| Sacramento Bee: We love our forests in California. After a century of rapidly losing them to farming and logging, we finally succeeded in virtually ending deforestation in California. We were driven by our interest in the natural beauty, the wildlife, the sustainable timber supplies and the water-purifying functions of old-growth redwoods along the coast, the blue oaks growing across the Central Valley and the mixed pine forests of the Sierra. It was only possible because we had a clear vision of the importance... |
| Scientists agree on global warming: Click here |
| Virginian-Pilot: The attack on the notion of global warming takes many forms, but a particularly pernicious one argues that scientific consensus on the subject is a myth. That charge has been made so many times by so many global warming deniers that 60 percent of Americans have accepted that scientists are divided on the issue. They simply aren't, and a new study shows just how far the fable diverges from reality. The study, published in Environmental Research Letters last week, examined the conclusions of... |
| Rebuilding the coastline, but at what cost?: Click here |
| New York Times: When a handful of retired homeowners from Osborn Island in New Jersey gathered last month to discuss post-Hurricane Sandy rebuilding and environmental protection, L. Stanton Hales Jr., a conservationist, could not have been clearer about the risks they faced. “I said, look people, you built on a marsh island, it’s oxidizing under your feet — it’s shrinking — and that exacerbates the sea level rise,” said Dr. Hales, director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership, an estuary program financed by the Environmental... |
| Little research rejects human-driven climate change theory: Click here |
| Mail and Guardian: "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the science literature" was published in the Environmental Research Letters journal on Thursday. It looked at 12 000 academic papers that talked about climate change and were published between 1991 and 2011. The majority did not take a stance on what was driving climate change, but 4 000 did. Of these, 97.1% said that humans, through their activity, were driving up temperatures and accelerating climate change. Only 83 took the opposing... |
| Climate Warnings, Growing Louder: Click here |
| New York Times: The news that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most important global warming gas, have hit 400 parts per million for the first time in millions of years increases the pressure on President Obama to deliver on his pledges to limit this country's greenhouse gas emissions. America cannot solve a global problem by itself. But as Mr. Obama rightly observed in his inaugural address, the United States, as both major polluter and world leader, has a deep obligation to help shield the... |
| Clouds ‘Cool Earth Less Than Once Thought’: Click here |
| Climate News Network: Extra cloud cover caused by emissions of industrial pollutants is known to reduce the effects of global warming, but its impact in reducing temperatures has been over-estimated in the climate models, new research has found. This is particularly significant for China and India, because it has been believed that these two giant countries would be partly shielded from the effects of climate change by their appalling industrial pollution. The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany believes... |
| Prince Charles puts heat on ministers over climate change: Click here |
| Telegraph: The Prince of Wales, who warned 50 months ago that there were fewer than 100 months left to save the planet from irreversible damage due to climate change, is keen to check on progress. Mandrake hears that the heir to the throne summoned Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary, and Greg Barker, the climate change minister, to a private meeting at his London residence, Clarence House, earlier this month. There have been suggestions that Prince Charles will tone down his public comments on controversial... |
| Two climate change numbers we ignore at our own peril: Click here |
| Daily Camera: In the rarefied air of Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which sits 11,141 feet above sea level, scientists have charted the passing of a milestone that, if ignored, heralds a future for civilization both tragic and chaotic. I'm referring to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which Charles David Keeling began monitoring in 1958. At that time, CO2 concentration was 313 parts per million (ppm). We are now at 400 ppm, and that is not good news. Why is this number so important?... |
| United Kingdom: Green Deal debt may have to be repaid before property sold: Click here |
| Guardian: Homeowners taking out a loan under the government's Green Deal energy efficiency scheme could find themselves having to pay off the debt before they can sell their property, according to consumer body Which? Since January, householders have been able to sign up to the Green Deal, which allows them to pay for energy efficiency improvements in their home with no, or little, upfront cost; instead, these are funded by a loan repaid through their electricity bill. Crucially, the "golden rule" of... |
| As Texas Towns Say No, Signs of Rising Resistance to Smart Meters: Click here |
| New York Times: In October, the City Council of this Central Texas town voted unanimously to purchase advanced electric meters, known as smart meters, for the city-owned electric utility. But some residents resisted, and the smart meter vote played a large role in last weekend’s recall of the city’s mayor and the electoral defeat of two council members. Voters here passed a referendum last weekend to enshrine in the City Charter the right of residents to refuse the installation of smart meters on their property.... |
| The Rise and Fall of China's Sun King: Click here |
| Reuters: In a 2010 speech before a packed ballroom of university students in Sydney, Shi Zhengrong, founder of Chinese solar-panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, listed the people who had been important in his rise to fame and riches. Two were of particular note: Yang Weize and Wang Rong, senior Communist Party officials from the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi. A decade earlier, Shi had been research director of a solar energy firm, a spin-off from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where... |
| Fluoridated water? Not all Portlanders will drink to that: Click here |
| LA Times: Proponents of fluoridating Portland's water supply had no trouble getting the local Urban League on board. Here in the biggest city in the country that still doesn't treat its water to prevent tooth decay, studies show that low-income children and kids of color have been hit hardest by untreated cavities. "Do we really want our children to be suffering from something we could prevent? Why would we not want to be involved?" said Jerome Brooks, an Urban League advocacy contractor who has helped... |
| Invasive species: 'away-field advantage' weaker than ecologists thought: Click here |
| ScienceDaily: For decades, ecologists have assumed the worst invasive species -- such as brown tree snakes and kudzu -- have an "away-field advantage." They succeed because they do better in their new territories than they do at home. A new study led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center reveals that this fundamental assumption is not nearly as common as people might think. The away-field advantage hypothesis hinges on this idea: Successful invaders do better in a new place because the environment... |
| Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon pacing 88% higher than last year's rate: Click here |
| Mongabay: Satellite analysis by a Brazil-based NGO indicates that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to pace well ahead of last year, when the government passed a weakened version of its law governing use of forest lands. Imazon's near-real-time deforestation tracking system - known as SAD - detected 1,570 square kilometers of accumulated forest loss between August 2012 and April 2013, an 88 percent increase over the 836 sq km cleared during the year earlier period. However accumulated forest... |
| Impossible Choice Faces America's First 'Climate Refugees': Click here |
| National Public Radio: Climate change is a stark reality in America's northernmost state. Nearly 90 percent of native Alaskan villages are on the coast, where dramatic erosion and floods have become a part of daily life. Perched on the Ninglick River on the west coast of the state, the tiny town of Newtok may be the state's most vulnerable village. About 350 people live there, nearly all of them Yupik Eskimos. But the Ninglick is rapidly rising due to ice melt, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the highest point... |
| DOE Approves Second Fracked Gas LNG Export Terminal: Click here |
| EcoWatch: Friday is the proverbial "take out the trash day" for the release of bad news among public relations practitioners and this last Friday was no different. In that vein, yesterday the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a conditional approval for the second-ever liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal. LNG is the super-chilled final product of gas obtained--predominantly in today`s context--via the controversial hydraulic fracturing process that is taking place throughout many states in... |
| Syria: Without Water, Revolution: Click here |
| New York Times: I just spent a day in this northeast Syrian town. It was terrifying — much more so than I anticipated — but not because we were threatened in any way by the Free Syrian Army soldiers who took us around or by the Islamist Jabhet al-Nusra fighters who stayed hidden in the shadows. It was the local school that shook me up. As we were driving back to the Turkish border, I noticed a school and asked the driver to turn around so I could explore it. It was empty — of students. But war refugees had occupied... |
| Central African Republic: Good news for elephants: Click here |
| Mongabay: Gabon has agreed to help battle poaching in protected areas in the Central African Republic following an elephant massacre at a renowned World Heritage site, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). According to the conservation group, Michel Djotodia, acting president of the Central African Republic (CAR) transitional government, and Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba met on May 14 to discuss a variety of issues, including the worsening ivory poaching situation in CAR. Earlier this month... |
| Bill calls on feds to address health impacts of climate change: Click here |
| Hill: A bill introduced Friday calls on the federal government to craft a national strategy for dealing with the public health effects of climate change. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) is sponsoring the measure. She said climate change has factored into recent increases in allergies, asthma, tropical diseases, drought and high temperatures. “Regardless of what one believes about its causes, climate change is very real,” Capps said in a statement, adding, “We have to provide our public health officials with... |
| Why Canada should back Antarctica North: Click here |
| Globe and Mail: Another kind of Canadian government would take this opportunity as Arctic Council chair to lead a diplomatic effort to demilitarize the region, to make it a northern Antarctica where, by international treaty, military activities are banned. Of course, the Arctic Council alone couldn't bring about demilitarization since it has no such power, but it could become an important place to put the issue on the international agenda. Canada should borrow a slogan from someone Americans love - Ronald Reagan,... |
| Crossroads for Europe's carbon-capture efforts: Click here |
| Reuters: European policymakers face a difficult decision on building carbon capture and storage (CCS) - saving money in the long run requires spending more upfront. CCS captures carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from a fossil fuel power plant and then pipes it to an underground storage site such as a depleted gas or oil reservoir. In theory, CCS would allow energy producers to continue to burn fossil fuels and still meet carbon emission targets. In practice, the technology is expensive and unproven. Clustering... |
| Blowing the carbon budget: Click here |
| Reuters: Budgets are made to be broken - especially when they are written by politicians. Unfortunately it seems the world is on course to break the carbon budget that scientists and policymakers agree is necessary to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius. If governments were really committed to limiting the rise in temperatures to 2 degrees, two-thirds of the currently known oil, coal and gas reserves would have to be left in the ground, according to the International... |
| Airlines fined millions for air pollution: Click here |
| AAP: Two Indian and eight Chinese airlines face millions of euros in fines for not paying for their greenhouse gas emissions during flights in the EU. Eight Chinese and two Indian airlines face fines of up to several million euros for not paying for their greenhouse gas emissions during flights within the bloc, the European Commission said on Friday. It said member states could fine the firms, among them Chinese flag carrier Air China, under the terms of the EU's Emissions Trading System which is... |
| Is tornado intensity increasing?: Click here |
| Climate Nexus: With at least 10 tornadoes ripping through North Texas in one night this week -- leveling neighborhoods, killing six and injuring dozens -- it might be tempting to call the twisters yet another instance of climate-fueled weather. But not so fast. While most climate scientists agree that global warming is driving record heat waves, widespread drought, heavy rain and floods, intense hurricanes, and even monster snowstorms, tornadoes -- at least for now -- are a different story. "With tornadoes,... |
| EU to dial back measures against global warming: Click here |
| Kyodo: The European Union, which has spearheaded efforts to curb global warming, is set to adopt a change of focus in response to concerns over costs and the impact on companies in economically depressed Europe. Under the change, the European Uniln will prioritize the supply of energy at affordable prices over cutting greenhouse gas emissions which impose burdens on industries, in a turnaround of the region's energy policy, an EU official said Saturday. EU leaders will decide on the shift in energy policy... |
| Stephen Harper touts Keystone XL pipeline in New York, downplays oilsands emissions: Click here |
| Edmonton Journal: The Keystone XL pipeline “absolutely needs to go ahead” because it will create jobs and bring energy security to the United States, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told an audience primarily made up of elderly businessmen Thursday. He said construction of the 1,800-kilometre pipeline will create 40,000 jobs and bring enough oil to reduce American dependence on offshore oil by 40 per cent. “This is an enormous benefit to the United States in terms of long-term energy security,” he said. At... |
| China 'will not accept' EU measures on emissions: Click here |
| China Daily: A senior official from the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on Friday that the country disapproved and "will not accept any unilateral and compulsory market measures", after the European Union threatened Chinese carriers with fines for non-compliance with its Emissions Trading System, or ETS. Speaking at the 2013 China Civil Aviation Development Forum in Beijing, Yan Mingchi, deputy director-general of the policy, law and regulation department under the CAAC, said that "airlines in... |
| Experts: Increased rate of weather disasters in Ohio linked to global warming: Click here |
| Central Oho: Weather disasters aren’t just a big deal in the South or along the coasts, according to a new report from Environment Ohio. They also occur with some frequency in Ohio. The report, “In the Path of the Storm,” stated seven of 10 Ohioans suffered from a weather disaster in the past six years. The report compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated disasters in each of Ohio’s counties, excluding tornadoes, which haven’t been linked to global warming. Julian Boggs, state policy... |
| EU should scrap energy subsidies to fight warming, Poland says: Click here |
| Bloomberg: The European Union should scrap fossil fuel and renewable energy subsidies and set a target to cut oil imports to remain the leader in the fight against global warming, according to Poland’s environment minister. Poland wants to keep energy prices at an affordable level, Minister Marcin Korolec said today at a conference in Warsaw attended by EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard titled “A World You Like With a Climate You Like.” “We have our ideas of how to improve EU policies and thus climate,”... |
| Australia: Opposition reaffirms carbon tax double dissolution threat: Click here |
| Australian Broadcasting Corporation: ELIZABETH JACKSON: The Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has made it clear that the Coalition will scrap the carbon tax if it wins the election in September. But a Tony Abbott victory won't mean an end to the debate. With the changeover in the Senate not due until next year, Labor and the Greens would be able to block repeal legislation. And that would mean voters could face the prospect of having to return to the polls again next year, with the Coalition reaffirming its threat to call a double... |
| Study quantifies sea level rise from melting glaciers: Click here |
| Summit Voice: The world`s major ice sheets -- on Greenland and Antarctica -- haven`t really started a major meltdown yet. But the rest of the world`s glacial regions have been losing ice at a rate of about 260 billion metric tons annually, raising sea level by about 0.03 inches per year -- about a third of the observed sea level rise. The biggest ice losses are happening in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalaya. Combined, the areas contribute as much to sea level rise... |
| Delaware: Council members disagree on risk of sea level rise: Click here |
| Sussex County Post: Sussex County Council members are not on the same wave length regarding the debatable issue of sea level rise. At the May 7 council meeting, Susan Love, a planner with the Department of Environmental Control and Natural Resources’ Coastal Management Program, delivered an update on progress made by the state’s Sea Level Rise Advisory Committee, which is developing an adaptation plan for the state that will provide a path forward for planning for impacts of sea level rise. Ms. Love’s presentation... |
| Tundra Carbon Impact?: Click here |
| Environmental News Network: There is a concern with the carbon stored in the form of frozen partially decomposed vegetation in the vast tundra of the north. When the permafrost melts, it may releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are greenhouse gases. The amount of greenhouse gases which will be released from the Arctic’s stockpile of carbon may be more secure than scientists thought. In a 20-year experiment that warmed patches of chilly ground, tundra soil kept its stored carbon, researchers... |
| America’s first climate refugees: “It’s happening now … The village is sinking”: Click here |
| Guardian: One afternoon in the waning days of winter, the most powerful man in Newtok, Alaska, hopped on a plane and flew 1,000 miles to plead for the survival of his village. Stanley Tom, Newtok`s administrator, had a clear purpose for his trip: find the money to move the village on the shores of the Bering Sea out of the way of an approaching disaster caused by climate change. Newtok was rapidly losing ground to erosion. The land beneath the village was falling into the river. Tom needed money for bulldozers... |
| The US disconnect over climate change: Click here |
| Aljazeera: As scientists become more overwhelmingly convinced that climate change is man-made, why do politicians and the public give credence to global warming sceptics? A review of scientific literature published this week has found that 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers taking a position on global warming say humans are causing it. Yet, a large proportion of the US public still seems unconvinced. There is a false balance of media coverage where two or three percent of skeptics get close to 50 percent... |
| Afghan Mineral Treasures Stay Buried, Hostages To Uncertainty: Click here |
| National Public Radio: For years, reports have suggested that Afghanistan is sitting on massive deposits of copper, gold, iron and rare earth minerals valued up to $3 trillion. This provides hope for a future economy that would not have to rely so heavily on foreign donations. But with an uncertain political, regulatory and security environment, international investors are hesitant. And it could be many years before Afghanistan begins extracting its mineral wealth. The Afghan Geological Survey office in Kabul is... |
| EU carbon permit surplus doubles in 2012: Click here |
| Financial Times: The surplus of permits in the EU’s carbon market more than doubled last year to 2bn, according to fresh data that Brussels hope will rally support for its controversial plan to boost carbon prices. The data – released by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm – reveal that free permits given over the past five years to makers of steel, glass, cement and other heavy industries exceeded their carbon emissions during that period by nearly 300m tonnes. Under the rules of the EU’s flagship... |
| Climate finance that makes sense to farmers: Click here |
| World Agroforestry Centre: Agricultural carbon projects involving smallholder farmers can take up to 16 years to generate a profit from carbon credits. Meanwhile, farmers’ direct income from poles, timber and fuelwood could be 50 times higher than the value of carbon revenue. These statements are just a snapshot of the evidence presented in a new World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) policy brief, Climate Finance for Agriculture and Livelihoods, which calls for an innovative and integrated approach to financing sustainable... |
| What Can Bamboo Do About CO2?: Click here |
| Ecology Global Network: Efforts to thoroughly study the role that plants play in climate change mitigation are increasing. Most researchers focus on the promise of large, leafy forest trees to help remove carbon from the atmosphere; for example Lal (1998) in India, Chen (1999) in Canada, Zhang (2003) in China, and Monson ( 2002) in the United States. This is because, generally speaking, the bigger the plant, the more CO2 it absorbs - and trees are the most obvious large plant species. However, there are some very large... |
| Villages in Trinidad embrace threatened sea turtles, spark tourist boom: Click here |
| Associated Press: Giant leatherback turtles, some weighing half as much as a small car, drag themselves out of the ocean and up the sloping shore on the northeastern coast of Trinidad while villagers await wearing dimmed headlamps in the dark. Their black carapaces glistening, the turtles inch along the moonlit beach, using their powerful front flippers to move their bulky frames onto the sand. In years past, poachers from Grande Riviere and nearby towns would ransack the turtles' buried eggs and hack the critically... |
| Scientists agree on climate change. So why doesn’t everyone else?: Click here |
| Washington Post: Here`s a finding that shouldn`t be all that surprising: Since 1991, roughly 97 percent of all published scientific papers that take a position on the question agree that humans are warming the planet. That stat comes from this extensive new survey led by John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli, who run the Skeptical Science website. And it builds on earlier studies finding the exact same thing. The authors sifted through 11,944 climate-related abstracts over the past two decades and found that 66.4 percent... |
| The sense in hedging for climate volatility: Click here |
| Globe and Mail: In the financial markets, volatility is rising and all manner of derivatives are employed to hedge against potentially catastrophic losses. In the real world, the climate is becoming more volatile, yet cities and businesses – make that entire industries – are doing little to protect themselves from extreme weather. They are everywhere, endless rows of cookie-cutter towers. Besides being bland, even hideous, they are obviously not built to cope with volatile weather patterns, such as the soaring... |
| Front-row seats to climate change: Click here |
| PhysOrg: By day, insects provide the white noise of the South, but the night belongs to the amphibians. In a typical year, the Southern air hangs heavy from the humidity and the sounds of wildlife. The Southeast, home to more than 140 species of frogs, toads and salamanders, is the center of amphibian biodiversity in our nation. If the ponds and swamps are the auditorium for their symphonic choruses, the scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, or ARMI, have... |
| Scientists Agree On Climate Change, Why Doesn't The Public?: Click here |
| National Public Radio: A new study confirms that the vast majority of scientists who research the climate accept that the planet is warming and human beings are largely responsible. Yet a large slice of the American public believes that scientists are deeply split about global warming. |
| In landmark ruling, Indonesia's indigenous people win right to millions of hectares of forest: Click here |
| Mongabay: In a landmark ruling, Indonesia's Constitutional Court has invalidated the Indonesian government's claim to millions of hectares of forest land, potentially giving indigenous and local communities the right to manage their customary forests, reports Mongabay-Indonesia. In a review of a 1999 forestry law, Indonesia's Constitutional Court ruled [PDF - Indonesian] that customary forests should not be classified as "State Forest Areas". The move is significant because Indonesia's central government... |
| The EPA Could Lose Its Power to Fight Climate Change Before Using It: Click here |
| Atlantic Wire: Advocates of forceful action on climate change have long held a trump card. The primary source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. is coal plants, and -since the Supreme Court has determined that those emissions are a pollutant -the EPA is mandated to regulate them. At some point, then, whether whatever president likes it or not, the agency had to make a rule limiting carbon dioxideemissions. But, what the court giveth, the court can rescind in a tightly contested vote. And with a barrage... |
| BLM Fails to Comply with Court Order, Refuses to Change Transparency Policy: Click here |
| EcoWatch: Just more than three months ago, in a momentous victory for the public’s right to know and government transparency, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Richard P. Matsch ruled on Feb. 13, that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated the public’s right to know when it concealed the identity of the entities that nominate public lands for gas drilling leases. Specifically, the court held that BLM’s asserted justification for withholding the requested information “runs directly contrary to the purpose... |
| Indigenous association to sue to shut down Panama's REDD+ program: Click here |
| Mongabay: Panama's largest association of indigenous people will sue the Panamanian government to shut down the country's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) program. The National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (COONAPIP) announced its intent after it failed to reach agreement with the United Nation's REDD+ program, which has been working to establish a forest conservation framework in the Central American country. REDD+ aims to compensate tropical countries for cutting... |
| A Black Mound of Canadian Oil Waste Is Rising Over Detroit: Click here |
| New York Times: Assumption Park gives residents of this city lovely views of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit skyline. Lately they've been treated to another sight: a three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the other side of the Detroit River. Brian Masse, a member of the Canadian Parliament, wants a bilateral agency to investigate the pile accumulating in Detroit. Detroit's ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada's oil sands... |
| ‘Artificial Forest’ Nanosystem Mimics Photosynthesis, Researchers Say: Click here |
| Yale Environment 360: U.S. scientists have developed what they say is the first integrated nanosystem capable of replicating the process of photosynthesis, a sort of “artificial forest” that could one day lead to the production of hydrogen that could be used to power fuel cells. Composed of nanowire structures -- including silicon “trunks” and titanium oxide “branches” -- the system mimics the role played by chloroplasts in promoting photosynthesis in green plants. By assembling the “trees” in a dense array, resembling... |
| No Nukes Groundswell Hits California, Solartopia Rising: Click here |
| EcoWatch: In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk. With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year. But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart: a no nukes groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle the grassroots just might win. Indeed, if ever there was a time when... |
| Fish Feeling the Heat from Global Warming: Click here |
| EcoWatch: A study featured in the current issue of Nature reveals that ocean warming has already affected fisheries around the world over the past four decades as fish populations shift in response to changing sea temperatures. The findings provide an indicator of the effect that climate change has on the distribution and abundance of fish. The study also points to the need for wildlife officials in New England and around the world to give fish and the ecosystems they rely upon a better chance to adapt to... |
| Call to mainstream ethnobotany into development: Click here |
| SciDevNet: Efforts to protect plant species important for nutrition, medicine and cultural heritage are being hampered by the failure of ethnobotanists -- scientists who study the relationship between people and plants -- to connect with policymakers and the wider development community, warn experts. A new global programme is needed to mainstream ethnobotany into development and to place local communities' needs and traditional knowledge at the heart of plant conservation, a meeting of scientists at the... |
| Draft fed rules would let frackers do whatever they want, but they’re still not happy: Click here |
| Grist: For everyone who was hoping the Obama administration`s proposed new rules for natural gas drilling on public lands would make a difference, the just-released new draft amounts to a big "frack you." Federal rules governing fracking on public lands are being updated, ostensibly to help manage the boom that`s polluting America`s groundwater and shaking free vast volumes of cheap natural gas. Environmentalists were disappointed a year ago when the Department of Interior released a fracker-friendly... |
| Green roofs don’t work unless you plant them with diverse, local plants: Click here |
| Grist: Don’t freak out, but there’s a problem with green roofs: They’re not necessarily greener than ordinary roofs. Soooooo kind of a major problem. With a little extra effort, though, green roofs can be efficient AND locally sourced — you just can’t take the easy way out. Scientific American reports: [R]ooftop vegetation has to be able to survive the high winds, prolonged UV radiation and unpredictable fluctuations in water availability. To resist these harsh environments, a majority of green roofs... |
| Scientists agree overwhelmingly on global warming. Why doesn’t the public know that?: Click here |
| New York Times: Most climate scientists agree that global warming is caused by human activity, according to a new survey of published papers on climate science. "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary,” said John Cook, the survey’s lead author, in a statement. A team of Australian and North American scholars examined 11,944 peer-reviewed climate papers written by some 29,000 climate scientists between 1991... |
| Fiji's villagers move uphill to escape global warming's rising seas: Click here |
| Telegraph: Fiji's picturesque Natewa Bay must be a hard place to leave, and for none more so than the villagers of Vunidogoloa, who are preparing to abandon their ancestral home in the face of the rising sea. But they have little choice: big waves now overtop a once-protective sea wall, their salt-polluted vegetation is dying. They are to move as a community a mile inland, and uphill, to a new site on the northern island of Vanua Levu. Devout Methodists, they have named Kenani, Fijian for Canaan – the promised... |
| From 'Potent' Pollen to Double Whammy Allergy Seasons: Click here |
| ABC: Climate changes and rising carbon dioxide levels don't just affect the environment. Experts say they also affect your nose. Warmer temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels mean certain plants will thrive, and those are the plants that tend to make us sneeze during allergy season. Allergies may seem like a minor nuisance, but according to the CDC there are an estimated 50 million Americans living with allergies, and $18 billion is spent every year dealing with the affliction. From hay fever... |
| EU fisheries reform plan falls short of outright discards ban: Click here |
| Guardian: Fisheries ministers from across Europe came to an agreement on a sweeping reform of fisheries policies early on Wednesday morning, but fell short of the most ambitious changes that green campaigners had demanded. They agreed to ban the wasteful practice of discarding healthy fish at sea, but most of the ban will be phased in from 2015 instead of this year as had been proposed, and there are significant caveats for some species. Fish quotas will be based on scientific advice on what is the "maximum... |
| Ukraine Carbon Offset Usage Soars as EU Ban Talk Boosts Demand: Click here |
| Bloomberg: Factories, utilities and airlines snapped up a flood of carbon offsets from Ukraine and Russia to comply with European Union emission targets in 2012 amid speculation the credits would face usage restrictions. Ukraine supplied 169 million metric tons of United Nations Emission Reduction Units to EU emitters, a more than fivefold increase from 31.5 million tons in 2011, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, citing EU data published today. That’s the most of any country supplying credits, the... |
| Nearly 100% of new California electricity to be solar: Click here |
| New Economy: Herman Trabish of Greentech Media has happened across a pretty interesting find -- 97% of new electricity generation capacity in line to be added to the California grid in the second half (2H) of 2012 is from solar power projects. This is according to the California Independent System Operator (the ISO), as published in the 2012 Annual Report on Market Issues and Performance. In total, 1,633 megawatts of generation capacity are in line to be added to the grid in 2H 2013. A whopping 1,581 megawatts... |
| Obama climate agenda faces Supreme Court reckoning: Click here |
| Reuters: With a barrage of legal briefs, a coalition of business groups and Republican-leaning states are taking their fight against Obama administration climate change regulations to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups, along with states such as Texas and Virginia, have filed nine petitions in recent weeks asking the justices to review four U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are designed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. If the court were... |
| Under fire, EPA nominee can't give ground on climate change: Click here |
| Boston Globe: After a month of procedural delays, the nomination of Gina McCarthy to run the Environmental Protection Agency was finally moved Thursday out of the Environment and Public Works Committee to the full Senate. But the party-line vote of 10 Democrats and eight Republicans suggested more turbulence ahead, as the Senate Democrats will need the support of at least five Republicans to reach a filibuster-proof majority for confirmation. Hardball tactics aren’t justified in the case of a nominee who worked... |
| Australia's 'unpopular' carbon price isn't to blame for Labor's poor polling: Click here |
| Guardian: Since the disappointment of Copenhagen in 2009, Australia has witnessed a concerted scare campaign against action on global warming. The scare campaign has been led by senior commentators in (Murdoch owned) News Limited papers, by conservative radio shock-jocks on the airwaves, and in parliament by extremist opposition party leader Tony Abbott. From the moment Australia's carbon pricing legislation package, the Clean Energy Future Act, was announced Tony Abbott has barnstormed from one end of... |
| Researchers develop highest-resolution global forest cover dataset to date: Click here |
| Mongabay: Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a 30-meter resolution forest cover data set that could boost efforts to track deforestation and forest degradation. The dataset, which is published in the International Journal of Digital Earth, is based on combining data from two satellite sensor systems: 250-meter resolution MOderate-resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) and 30-meter Landsat imagery. The result is a tree cover layer that is more accurate than the industry standard for... |
| UK Signals Support for EU Import of Canadian Tar Sands Oil: Click here |
| Guardian: Britain has given its clearest signal yet that it wants to allow European countries to import carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Canada. Leaked papers seen by the Guardian show that in EU negotiations on laws intended to encourage the use of low-carbon transport fuels, the UK has rejected language that would class tar sands oil as more polluting than conventional crude or other fuels. The European commission has proposed labelling the oil as "highly polluting" under its fuel quality directive,... |
| Two-Decade-Old Harvard Data Confounds U.S. EPA Nomination: Click here |
| Bloomberg: Buried in the questions Senate Republicans want answered by the nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency is a stumper: data linking microscopic particles in the air to premature death. The problem is the EPA doesn’t have the data, which was compiled by Harvard University researchers more than two decades ago, and confidentiality agreements with hundreds of thousands of participants prevent researchers from making it public. The nominee, Gina McCarthy, had nothing to do with the research.... |
| Senate Panel Advances Nominee for E.P.A: Click here |
| New York Times: A sharply divided Senate committee on Thursday approved the nomination of Gina McCarthy to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Environment and Public Works Committee voted to clear Ms. McCarthy by 10-to-8 along strictly partisan lines, sending the nomination to the Senate floor where Republicans are threatening to filibuster unless the E.P.A. meets demands for additional information. The Democrats on the panel, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer of California, were... |
| Arctic Council Takes First Steps to Reflect Global Interests: Click here |
| ClimateWire: The Arctic Council added China and five other countries as official observers yesterday, expanding the focus of the organization and underscoring the complicated politics created by newly open waters in the north because of climate change. The council -- which consists of eight Arctic countries -- granted observer status to India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore in addition to China. The group deferred a final decision about an observer application from the European Union, although... |
| Interior Proposes New Rules for Fracking on U.S. Land: Click here |
| New York Times: The Obama administration on Thursday issued a new set of proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on public lands, moving further to address industry concerns about the costs and reporting burdens of federal regulation. The new Interior Department proposal, which is subject to 30 days of public comment and further revision, disappointed environmental advocates, who had pushed for full disclosure of the chemicals used in the drilling process and tougher standards for groundwater... |
| Public anger over pollution is being taken seriously: Click here |
| Independent: Pollution and its health effects are a leading cause of unrest in China as the country’s rapid economic rise is accompanied by often appalling environmental side-effects. The air in most cities is regularly barely breathable and most of China’s rivers are poisoned. Pollution is the single biggest source of complaint among young people, and most environmental protests are carried out by educated, middle-class Chinese, worried about the danger to their families that environmental degradation can... |
| Study: 97 percent Agreement on Manmade Global Warming: Click here |
| Climate Central: The scientific agreement that climate change is happening, and that it's caused by human activity, is significant and growing, according to a new study published Thursday. The research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of climate research to date, finds that 97.1 percent of the studies published between 1991 to 2011 that expressed a position on manmade climate change agreed that it was happening, and that it was due to human activity. The study looked at peer reviewed research that... |
| Smaller Glaciers Boost Sea Level as Much as the Giants: Click here |
| Climate Central: As the planet warms under the influence of rising greenhouse gases, and melting ice drives sea level higher, scientists have focused mostly on changes in the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. If either one melts substantially or slides into the ocean, the results would be catastrophic. But there's another ice reserve to worry about: the many thousands of smaller glaciers unconnected to continental-scale ice sheets. They're melting, too, and a new report in Science shows that... |
| Study Shows Scientists Agree on Anthropogenic Climate Change: Click here |
| ScienceDaily: A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused. The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming -- 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing human-made, or anthropogenic, global... |
| Interior Department offers new rules for 'fracking': Click here |
| LA Times: The Interior Department proposed new rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas on federal land Thursday, drawing criticism from environmentalists that it had weakened an earlier draft to placate industry. Industry officials were not mollified, however, reiterating their objections to federal standards. Last year, they criticized the department's earlier draft rules as inflexible and onerous. "We are proposing some common-sense updates that increase safety while also providing flexibility... |
| Everest Ice Shrinking Fast, Scientists and Climbers Say: Click here |
| National Geographic: Everest isn't the same mountain it was when Jim Whittaker became the first U.S. climber to summit the peak in 1963. The world's highest peak has been shedding snow and ice for the past 50 years, possibly due in part to global warming, new research says. (Take an Everest quiz.) New analyses show Mount Everest has lost significant snow and ice cover over the past half century. In nearby Sagarmatha National Park, glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent. Weather data reveal the larger Everest region has... |
| Research Into Carbon Storage in Arctic Tundra: Click here |
| ScienceDaily: When UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Seeta Sistla and her adviser, environmental studies professor Josh Schimel, went north not long ago to study how long-term warming in the Arctic affects carbon storage, they had made certain assumptions. "We expected that because of the long-term warming, we would have lost carbon stored in the soil to the atmosphere," said Schimel. The gradual warming, he explained, would accelerate decomposition on the upper layers of what would have previously been frozen... |
| As climate change broils the Arctic, John Kerry apologizes: Click here |
| Grist: "Hello, world? Hey, John Kerry here. Just wanted to apologize for all those decades of America`s non-leadership on that crazy global warming thing. But now we`ve decided to start making some nice sounds about the issue. Hope you can hear me making them over the din of the Arctic ice breaking up behind me." OK, so the Secretary of State didn`t actually say that. But the leader of the department that will rule on the climate-changing Keystone XL pipeline proposal has begun apologizing for the nation`s... |
| Is Your State Home to One of the 20 Worst Water Polluters?: Click here |
| EcoWatch: The Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, Ferro Corporation, American Electric Power, U.S. Department of Defense and Southern Company top the list of the most hazardous polluters of U.S. surface water, according to a report released today by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch and the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (PERI). A Toxic Flood: The United States Needs Stronger Regulations to Protect Public Health From Industrial... |